Tuesday, August 30, 2011

We had a busy but still relaxing weekend all at the same time this past weekend. It was the hottest weekend ever. Literally. We almost set the all time record high for the city on Sunday with our almost 110 degree heat. Not just for the day but for all time.

Saturday morning we went swimming with friends and had a lot of fun. Then naps and Bible class in the evening. Sunday we had some family time with donuts for breakfast and a trip to HEB all together. We spent lots of time inside - we played play dough. Abby and Micah both really love this ice cream shop play dough set Uncle Jeremy got Abby for her birthday.

After naps we made some brownies (Micah loved helping with that!) then we watched a movie when Beau left for work. I tried to cook dinner but that was made pretty difficult by someone throwing a major fit to "help!!!" Unfortunately there isn't much he can help with since I was making meatballs and all that was left was rolling the balls.

Yesterday started week 2 of kinder for Abby. Micah is adjusting well and he helped me clean in the morning before heading to the gym. My house is getting much cleaner now just Micah in the morning. The fact that the gym classes kept the same summer schedule so I now have a large block of time in the morning between dropping Abby off and heading to the gym helps too. Last year between the later start of preschool and earlier start time of the group-ex classes only left about 20-30 minutes to do anything. Now I have 1 and 1/2 - 2 1/2 hours between drop off and group-ex depending on the day/class. After school we went to the pool and swam for a while then came home for dinner. Bedtime was rough last night. I didn't plan on that. I thought an early day plus swimming meant they would crash fast but instead it was a rough 2 hours of Abby and Micah trying to chat through their walls, Micah trying to sneak into Abby's room, Abby playing with her toys instead of laying down..... Here's to hoping tonight goes better!

I did get an exciting package yesterday of vinyl so I can create some fun crafts! I ordered colors for Halloween and Christmas but most importantly purple and gold for LSU! I see some crafting in my near future.

Today's also the last day of the giveaway I have going on. The entries are really low so right now if you've entered your chances of winning are VERY high. :) Go here and enter if you want a chance to win! I'll close it at 9 pm CST tonight and pick a winner. Good luck!

Oh and if you like Chick-fil-a and haven't seen this - they are offering free breakfast next week so go here and see if your location is participating and sign up for a time-slot to get yours! I can't wait!

Monday, August 29, 2011

One of my favorite memories and best part of going back to school was always getting new clothes. I had a hard time this year with Abby going back to school because it's still so hot and I've mentioned before that almost all the stores have moved on to cooler weather, long sleeved fall clothes. I couldn't not give Abby the tradition of back to school shopping so we did get a few new shirts (letting her pick them out even!) and found some shorts on clearance. My mom surprised Abby with a box that had some more shorts and short sleeve shirts that were also in the sales.

In addition to the few new things she got she also still has some clothes from the spring/summer that have held up wonderfully and still look practically brand new. Those are here clothes from Tea Collection. She actually wore this playtime dress to school Wednesday with the leggings and looked adorable!

Unfortunately she's become particular about her clothes and dresses aren't her favorite to wear because Tea Collection has the most adorable dresses in their fall collection. I love the Marimba Mini Dress. Seriously I love all the dresses Tea Collection has .... I just wish Abby liked wearing dresses more but unless it's a hoodie dress she is kinda iffy on dresses.

I can't wait until it starts to get a little bit cooler so I can think about shopping for fall. Right now it's just too hot to even think about it! I love the little boy's collection. Micah approves as of his Tea Collection clothes as well. Aside from his monk-my shirt, some of his favorites are his frog and turtle shirts. Plus they are comfy and still look nice as well!

Saturday, August 27, 2011

Every week I work in the nursery at our Church on Saturday night, then we attend Church Sunday morning. Both days Abby and Micah go to their Bible classes where they hear a Bible story, have praise and worship and make a craft. With the new curriculum our Church started last year each week there is also a memory verse to go with the story. Abby has gotten really amazing at memorizing her verses. I tried to keep a note on my iphone of all her verses but somehow my iphone or itunes ate the note and it's gone. (Which after realizing some of my notes are missing I'm ever so excited for my Erin Condren planner to get here because I know my lists and notes won't disappear from it!)

Each week the kids come home with two crafts a piece (it will be 3 for Micah once the ladies Bible study starts up in a month!) so crafts quickly pile up around here. I've seen ideas for scanning art work into the computer and saving it or putting it into a collage and on Pinterest the other day I saw a neat idea for a prayer book with pictures of family/friends to pray for (one of my next projects!) so I combined the two ideas to create this memory verse book for the kids.

I took these prayer warrior badges and The Lord's Prayer that Abby memorized during the summer curriculum.

Then I took the Jonah crafts that they made last weekend and scanned them into the computer, added the week's verse and printed them as 4x6 pictures.

Then I picked up these photo albums at Target.

I put the pictures and Lord's prayer Bibles into the photo album.

I got out the silhouette and some black vinyl and cut out a verse for the front cover.

And now the kids each have a book with their memory verses so we can remember all of them as they learn new ones and I don't have a pile of crafts around my house because I really don't like throwing away crafts but I can't keep all of them!

Friday, August 26, 2011

I'm linking up with Kelly's Korner: Show Us Your Life about baby showers today. :)

One of my favorite details for a baby shower is a banner with the baby's name. I made this banner for my nephew's baby shower. It was a rubber ducky/LA Tech theme. I went with a pennant style in LA Tech colors.

I think my favorite part of the banner though was the personalized onesies. I'm also a fan of onesies on a baby shower banner. :)

For my friend's baby shower the year before the banner was a little more simple and it was before I knew about using heat transfer on shirts with my silhouette so I didn't decorate the onesies but they still looked darling.

I also made some cupcake toppers. :)

These were lemon cupcakes - pretty easy as I mainly added lemon to a plain vanilla cupcake recipe. Then I did the same with the frosting. They were so delicious though and refreshing with the lemonade we served.

I have a giveaway going on right now that just started today! Uprinting is giving away 250 personalized labels. So head over to my review blog to enter! Seriously I know you want to enter to win these right?

Oh and don't miss out - if you haven't seen Minted is currently offering 25 free mommy cards! These are awesome for passing out as you meet new friends or even dropping in those bowls to win a free lunch. :)

Happy Friday everyone! I hope ya'll have had a great week - especially if it's been the first week of school. Anyone have any fun weekend plans?

Did you catch the post I put up this morning with Abby's tv debut? So proud of my little fish. What a long way she's come this summer from not wanting to put her face in/swim without a life jacket before swim lessons to passing the swim test on Monday by being able to swim the whole length of the pool and tread water for 30 seconds.

And the exciting part: I have a giveaway for you! Uprinting is giving away 250 personalized labels. So head over to my review blog to enter! Seriously I know you want to enter to win these right?*The link/giveaway should be fixed now. I had the blog settings wrong so I was the only one who could see it.... oops!*

I finally found the video! They only used a few bits and pieces but Abby's in the video at 3 different points (2 of which are practically the same clip) She's in the very beginning, at about 1:00-1:10 into the clip &amp; 2:12ish. The clip is from one of the two local morning shows and is talking about the donation the car dealership organization made to the YMCA in the city and how they are using it to offer swim lessons to all kids who need/want them in the city so feel free to watch without sound if you want!

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Micah was such a sweet little man this morning. We read books, colored and played Wii Disney sing-along and then got busy cleaning. We've neglected that the past three days so I could keep him busy and not thinking about missing sister... well that and yesterday morning I crafted instead of cleaned. (I can't wait to share. I made memory verse books for the kids - I'm planning on posting how I did it on Saturday!)

I was able to clean the whole kitchen, mop the floors, wipe down the fridge and pick up in the living room all before 10 am. Unheard of compared to our routine this summer. Of course by the end of dinner my clean floor wasn't so clean any more.... rice + Micah = huge mess.

Since Micah was so well behaved this morning - helpful cleaning and played sweetly with his dogs and trains while I cleaned. When we ran to Target to get marinade for dinner (thought I had some but it must have gotten thrown out in the great fridge clean out a couple weeks ago) and then we got Chick-fil-a for lunch and let Micah play for 30 minutes. Amazingly he had the play area to himself the whole time. He was so cute playing too. Seriously he was loads of fun and cuteness today!

We got rain this afternoon. Probably the shortest and most poorly timed rain shower ever. Beau walked to pick Abby up from school and as soon as Abby came out it started pouring. It take maybe 5 minutes to walk so of course even with the dark clouds he never thought it would rain in the 15 minutes he was gone.... yea. He was soaked. Abby had her new Hello Kitty hoodie so she had that one, Beau carried her and she wasn't too terribly wet. Her backpack and lunch box were wet but luckily her folder inside wasn't. Oh I'm just glad he went to pick her up today instead of me.

We had a slightly better afternoon today. I took Abby out for a quick errand with me and had some one on one time with her - and got her some ice cream. Then an hour of craziness and meltdowns while I cooked. Then dinner, bath, pjs, teeth brushing and books all went smoothly. Abby was in bed at 7. I rocked Micah and he was out by 8. At 8:30 I heard chatter upstairs while I made Abby's lunch - went upstairs to find Micah awake in Abby's bed and Abby still awake. Oh boy. It's now almost 9:30 and all is quiet so I'm assuming they are asleep but not peeking just yet just in case.

At Abby's school they have a la carte options for lunch for the kids who buy lunch and apparently one of those options is ice cream. Abby's teacher asked us on Tuesday at kinder parent orientation if it was okay she use the rule that ice cream was only for Fridays. Thankfully everyone was good with that. So since I send Abby's lunch - I baked up a couple chocolate chip cookies tonight. One for her lunch and two for a bedtime snack for me along with a glass of milk. :) This way she hopefully won't be sad if the kids who buy lunch get ice cream tomorrow.

If you missed it this morning check out the offer Minted has going on for 25 free mommy cards. Even if you aren't needing them as mommy cards you can design the wording on the business cards however you want.

Tomorrow is Friday and the end of Abby's first week of school. Weekends are going to feel a lot more like weekends now that she's in school all week. Beau's days off are usually Monday and Tuesday so that's his "weekend" and when we used to do family outings.

Scratch that part about the kids being asleep.... as I was typing the last sentence a certain little boy came out of his room carrying his pillow, baby and doggie....

Minted is offering an amazing offer right now for 25 free mommy cards and a card holder! All you have to do is pay shipping and handling which I think is a great deal! These cards are all printed on high quality paper that you would find on fine stationary.

I've contemplated some mommy/play date cards for a while now and with Abby starting school and meeting her classmates parents, I thought these would be perfect - no searching for a pen and scrap of paper to write down my information on.

I finally picked out this card. There are are over a 100 designs and it was so hard to choose! You can even choose to put a picture of your family or your kids (or whatever you want) on the back - or you can choose a solid color back if you'd prefer. I can't wait to get mine!

Either banner on this post will take you to get started designing your cards if you want to get some of your own!

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Home is pretty quiet this week with Abby off at kinder. Micah is slowly adjusting. On Monday, Micah didn't seem bothered for the first hour or so and plopped himself down to read a book while I uploaded pictures from the morning.

Daddy joined him to look at his book. When Daddy got up Micah came over to me and we read a couple books while I blogged about the first morning of school in between books while he picked a different one from the bookshelf.

After the first hour he started to acknowledge that Abby wasn't there and got a little upset. He was easily distracted by a quick trip to the park and then to the gym where he got to play with his friends. It was too cute because when he went in and sat down (everyone was sitting as they transitioned between group activities in the childwatch) one of his teachers or friends must have asked about his hair cut (their first time seeing it) and he put his hands up on his head imitating his hair being cut as he said "hair cut" (I could read his lips a little from the window.) Too cute to see him interacting with his friends at the gym.

Day 2 and 3 we kept busy as well with the gym and errands. Target and Michaels are much easier with only one child instead of two! Well that and I gave Micah a snack while he sat in the buggy.

Afternoons are a different story. They aren't very quiet. Abby comes home and is very very wound up. She and Micah end up very wild very quickly and are all over the place and lots of fighting and roughness. I haven't seen much of the sweet playing with their toys together that happened a lot over the summer. Monday it was quickly resolved by a trip to the pool but they were beyond exhausted after an early morning, long day and swimming. The pool isn't open on Tues/Thurs afternoons though so it wasn't an option yesterday. It's too hot to play outside in the afternoons (at least 100 if not hotter!) especially since we don't have much shade in the backyard. So yesterday we put on a movie when things got wild.

Today the kids calmed down some as I read books with them but I can't read books and cook dinner at the same time!

So moms with older kiddos in school all day - are your crazy when they get home? I know Abby has to be exhausted and that may be part of why she is so crazy. So how do you deal with it? I need ideas for a good after school routine. She only has one little thing of homework per day which so far takes less than 5 minutes to finish. I'll be glad when it cools off and they can play outside in the afternoon but until then I need something inside!

It's Wednesday and it's time for one of my favorite link ups of the week. My favorite pins on pinterest. I'm gathering crafting and activities ideas to do with my 2 year old now that sister is in kindergarten all day. Then because this weekend is supposed to be the hottest yet of the summer I'm wishing for fall and to be able to wear (and buy) some of the adorable fall outfits I've pinned.

Sponges soaked in finger paint - hopefully an easier way to finger paint!

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